Designing various business projects, creators often use high-quality pictures found on popular photo banks. Using stock images in your content can help you save the time and money you would spend on searching and hiring a professional photographer, designer, or illustrator. Still, you need to be sure that you won’t infringe any copyrights when using visuals found online.
This article will help you understand the basics of using free stock photos for business. Read on to discover the top source of free licensed HD pictures for commercial projects.
What are stock images?
Stock photos are images already taken, edited, and ready for download from online photo banks. You can usually find photos, vectors, illustrations, clip art, hand drawings, digitally created artwork, and other types of images among the available files. They come with licenses defining their usage terms for personal and commercial purposes. By downloading stock pictures and following their licensing conditions, you won’t face legal issues using these visuals in your projects.
Transparent licensing conditions are one of the biggest perks of stock content marketplaces. Using visuals that are not rightfully yours can get you into copyright infringement. Image stocks have convenient, dedicated web pages for license types that explain their nuances.
Types of free image licenses
Usually, image stocks offer visuals under the two most widespread types of licenses:
Creative Commons and Royalty-Free. They can also provide custom licenses that specify usage details, e.g., for a commercial marketing campaign.
What is the Creative Commons License?
The Creative Commons License allows you to obtain legal and free photos for business. This public license allows creators to protect their work by copyright and define how others can use and modify it.
There are six types of Creative Commons License: CC BY, CC BY-SA, CC BY-NC, CC BY-ND, CC BY-NC-SA, and CC BY-NC-ND. The CC BY and CC BY-SA types grant users the right to redistribute modified visuals and include them in commercial activities as long as they attribute the author.
License types tagged with ND grant usage rights but forbid creating derivative works with a visual. License types tagged with NC forbid using images for commercial projects. There is also the Creative Commons Zero License, which allows using pictures without attributing the author.
What is the Royalty-Free License?
The Royalty-Free License is one of the most popular in the stock image industry, as it is simple and flexible. Although the license terms might vary for each website, in general, it grants you the rights to use a visual for editorial (when specified), personal, and commercial purposes. There aren’t any limits regarding the license duration or the geographic area where it’s used.
Despite the “free” in its license name, royalty-free images may be paid. However, the fee is usually reasonable and paid only once. It’s important to remember that the author of a visual retains the copyright and the purchase doesn’t grant you exclusive rights for the image. Pictures can be downloaded and used multiple times by different users.
The Royalty-Free License has its restrictions. Here are the most common ones:
- Visuals cannot be shared, transferred, or gifted to any third party;
- Visuals cannot be used for official logo, design mark, or trademark creation;
- Visuals cannot be included in explicit content;
- Visuals with models on them cannot be used in a way that appears as a direct promotion of products or services.
What do you need to know when using free stock pictures for business purposes?
Be mindful of the following aspects when downloading and using stock photos:
- Always choose pictures carefully. For instance, using free images with identifiable people or celebrities for promotional purposes could cause legal issues.
- Choose the license type that fits your usage goal. If you’ll be using a visual in a marketing campaign targeted at a large audience, it’s better to choose a special license type suitable for your needs, e.g., an Extended License. Note that some license types may require payment.
- Don’t use an image if you have doubts. If you are unsure that using a specific free image won’t lead to copyright violation or cause other legal issues, it’s better to pick another visual with clear usage terms.
Main ways to use stock photos for business
Eye-catching visuals can easily benefit your brand and commercial material displayed online and offline. Here is where you can use stock images:
- as a part of your website design;
- in social media, ads, online promotions, and marketing materials;
- for product cards;
- on packaging;
- for branding purposes.
Where can you find royalty-free photos for commercial use?
Depositphotos is an extensive image stock offering a variety of free images for website, social media, marketing, and other commercial design purposes. Over 168 million royalty-free files are available on the site. The platform offers thematic categories and trendy collections to make the photo search easier. You can also use a Reverse Image Search feature to look for similar licensed visuals using a reference file. Moreover, filtering images by type, date, orientation, color, number of people, location, and other advanced parameters speeds up the process and provides you with relevant HD material in a few clicks.
Free stock images on Depositphotos can be used for personal, editorial, and commercial purposes, as well as for derivative works. Note that you can create no more than 500,000 copies of digital or print files. Also, free visuals cannot be resold or distributed for free.
To use Depositphotos free files legally, you have to attribute them. Tips for online and offline attribution can be found by clicking on any free image. For digital usage (for web, apps, games, and video platforms), you need to copy a unique link provided by the platform and paste it along with your product. For printed materials, text attribution is required, e.g., “Image resource: Depositphotos” or “This article has been designed using images from Depositphotos.com”.
To sum up
You can use free stock images found on online photo banks for personal and commercial creative projects. To avoid copyright issues when using stock files, always carefully study the licensing terms and refrain from using visuals if you have doubts regarding legality. Browsing trustworthy stock content websites allows you to find high-quality licensed material quickly. Check out Depositphotos’ extensive library to find royalty-free images for your striking design projects.
